Civic Catalyst Newsletter
Summer 2002
Batten Symposium: Panel Highlights
Civic Connections: Getting Them Right
Three top editors discussed what civic journalism has taught them.
JENNIE BUCKNER
Editor, The Charlotte Observer
The underlying premise is not something we always go into in journalism schools or in newsrooms. That is, if you’re really going to report a story well, start where the citizen starts. Start with the person who’s living this, begin there. Don’t begin with the expert.
If it’s a story about a report, of course you’re going to call the person who makes the report first. Then the instinct will be just to go down that road. Then at the end, we need to find some people to humanize this. So you go out and pick off of the tree – you know, I need the expert and I need the victim and I need the solution. That’s how we report a lot, and I think that’s how you teach a lot.
The thing I’ve learned is, before you do all of that, go and listen to people who are really living it. In “Taking Back Our Neighborhoods,” the key thing was listening to those citizen panels. They gave us some great advice. That is, you’d better find some solution stories and some people who are doing things about crime and winning.
Value citizen voices and start where the people who are living the story start. Because if you do it at the end, it may be too late. You may not know what you should have been looking for.
CHRIS SATULLO
Editorial Page Editor, The Philadelphia Inquirer
I’ve tried to push us towards doing what I call 360 degrees of opinion. If we have a topic, we go out and we try to think, or even better talk to citizens, about the different values and the different starting points they bring to a given issue. Try to get as many pieces in a given package or in a sequence that will give three, four or five distinct takes on an issue, which aren’t necessarily arguing with each other. It’s just coming from a different entry point, arguing from a different set of values, offering a different set of solutions.
We’ve learned that in talking to citizens, we have a tendency to frame the questions we ask in terms of the way the political culture has already framed them. If the political culture has framed them as what E.J. Dionne called in “Why Americans Hate Politics” a set of false either/or choices, and you ask them how they feel about these false either/or choices, you’re either going to get them parroting back things they’ve already heard, or you’re going to get essentially disengaged answers, because you’re not starting where they’re starting.
So when we go to citizens and ask them to write for us on our Community Voices page or our commentary page, we try to frame the questions in terms of values and personal experience. We’re much more likely to ask the question, “Tell us about a time when” or “Tell us a story about,” and then ask them to explain what that story meant to them or what that said to them.
FRANK DENTON
Editor, Wisconsin State Journal
I think early on some of the … critics of civic journalism saw the word connections as compromise.
But I am convinced that, in our town, our projects have actually enhanced our credibility. The people out there love it that we admit our vulnerability. They love our openness, our honesty, our sincerity. And they really like optimism. People need some optimism. When we go out and do these things, it shows people that it’s not our world, which is the politicians and the press in some kind of conspiracy … versus the public. But it shows that we are out there trying to make these connections. Then they see us as more credible, more on their side and more part of the solution rather than part of the problem.